Australian government support drops as One Nation gains ground

Support for Australia’s government has dropped to its equal-lowest level since it came to power four years ago, with the right-wing One Nation party gaining ground, according to a new poll.Labor’s primary vote dropped to 30 per cent in the latest Newspoll carried in the Australian newspaper. Meanwhile, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation garnered the same share of support, rising to near its historic best, according to the poll of 1,238 voters.Support for One Nation has soared over the past year as voters increasingly desert the two centre-right parties in the opposition Coalition, which has been riven by division since losing government in 2022. One Nation has also benefited from Labor’s growing unpopularity and is aiming to translate that surge into election wins after gaining its first Federal seat in May. Hanson sparked a domestic firestorm in Australia in June when she called for the nation to become “monocultural”, saying immigration had caused a crisis in the country. In a podcast last week with far-right English activist Tommy Robinson, she lamented the end of the White Australia Policy, according to local media reports. That was a series of racial discriminatory immigration policies that was wound down from the mid-1960s and was ended completely in 1973. Hanson also spoke last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference in London, and travelled to Italy to meet Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, who is a supporter of the One Nation party and gave Hanson a plane earlier in 2026. The next electoral test for the party will be at the end of August, when it contests a seat in suburban Perth in the west of the country. BLOOMBERG